I expected to be able to attend all the film screenings, but I learned on the opening day of the festival that wasn’t the case. A number of screenings had been designated “special events.” The staff at the theater informed me of this when they turned me away from one of the screenings. I stood off to the side for about 10 minutes while I searched the website on my phone in vain for details on what was excluded from All Access. While I was confident that I should have been able to see every film, I decided not to press the issue since I couldn’t bring up the relevant details. I went to the ticket window to ask which screenings were excluded and the person staffing the booth told me the info was on the web site. The look on their face suggested that I was either the first person or the fortieth to ask, so I figured I would tread lightly and explain that I was unable to find the list of exclusions and if they could list the titles for me, I could avoid the embarrassment of going through this again. They graciously provided me with a handwritten list.

Well, it turns out that I was mistaken. I should have addressed this sooner, but I only found the list of excluded titles yesterday morning. How could I not have seen it sooner? The list of exceptions was only noted here. When the festival was announced, I browsed through the individual detail pages for each film to see what interested me. Each detail page has a link to directly buy tickets; before the festival began, there were also links to buy ticket bundles for multiple films at a discount and a link to purchase an All Access Pass. However, the individual detail pages didn’t specify which films weren’t included in All Access (at least, I didn’t see any notice on the individual pages). I didn’t go through every synopsis, I got to a point where there was enough I wanted to see that the All Access Pass was worth it, so I clicked the link on one of the detail pages and bought my pass from there.

I suppose I could have made more of an effort to confirm what movies I would be able to see before the festival began, but I don’t think I would have successful in that regard. After all, I’ve been searching for the details for the last two weeks and only found them yesterday morning. My constructive feedback is that it would be great if the All Access exceptions were noted on the details page of each; I would have bought tickets for those right off the bat had they been noted there. It’s a minor oversight, but no big whoop in the end. Thanks to the list provided, I was able to search for the other movies. I missed out on tickets for 3 of them. I could have got on a standby line, but the weather was either boiling hot or pouring rain and I’m too old for that shit.

I had a great time at this year’s NYAFF, as I generally do at Film at Lincoln Center events. As I mentioned earlier, this year’s program was top notch, representing a variety of genres and a diverse slate that coalesced around themes both timely and timeless: aging with dignity, humanity’s relationship with nature, the struggles of the working class, the influence of technology on modern society, varied explorations of the LGBQTIA+ experience, alienation and assimilation of immigrants, our endemic world of viral infections, the fight for justice for marginalized and disenfranchised people, a few good old fashioned underdog stories, along with some scares, some laughs, some tears, some heroic action and some total romance. The programmers should be commended as well as the house staff at The Walter Reade Theater for their hard work in ensuring that everything ran smoothly.

I just signed up for Letterboxd! Friend me there — smile

Thanksgiving: Why some push back against the holiday’s ‘mythology’ – BBC News

A lot of good points made in this article — smile

Black Panther 2’s Namor casting opens up Latino colorism debate – Vox

How the hell does this movie cost $340 million?!?

So what happened? I initially set up a Facebook profile — wow, it’s been like 12 (twelve!) years ago, at least. I don’t know what the onboarding process is like now, but back then, among the information you were required to provide was a username and your “real name,” which was defined as the name you go by in your everyday life and that people generally know you by. For my username, I entered the same one I use everywhere, and for “real name,” I entered smile from The Lower East Side.

My info was quickly reviewed by a pretty wonky AI, which refused to let me continue. The AI didn’t accept smile from The Lower East Side as my name and instead suggested, based on my username, that my “real name” was actually Lower East Smile, and encouraged (read: insisted) that I use that instead. Just to get the ball rolling, I accepted the will of Skynet thinking that I would later make a support request from an actual human to get it fixed. So, I was Lower East Smile on Facebook, a name their AI designated, like a scene out of Idiocracy. Whatever, it’ll probably only be a couple of weeks once I contact tech support.

I soon discovered that tech support was nonexistent. How the fuck does a billion dollar company not have tech support?!? They had the standard community forums, where other users would help solve common issues or explain how to use basic functionality, but as far as help from an actual employee… There was a form you could fill out and hope for a reply, but there were just so many requests for help that they couldn’t guarantee a personal response. Oh, well.

As quickly as Facebook exploded into mainstream society, they realized just as quickly that the names many people go by in their everyday life aren’t their “real names” and don’t like being forced to use a name dictated to them by an algorhythm, especially the people with clearly defined and established public personas: celebrities. Remember when Lady Gaga was a shill for Google+? Know why Facebook was unable to make that deal? Because Facebook‘s AI insisted that Lady Gaga was not a name and that she call herself Little Monster, to which Lady Gaga was naturally all, “Fuck you and the light cycle you rode in on!” ^{[citation needed]}

The “real name” thing became an issue for Facebook because celebrities aren’t the only ones who assume names that don’t match their legal designations. People use pseudonyms for all kinds of reasons. Whistleblowers, domestic abuse survivors and political activitists may need to conceal their identities for their safety. People who transition may assume a name that aligns with how they identify. Facebook then introduced changes to their policy to allow for these circumstances. They began accepting requests from people to use their preferred name on Facebook.

Facebook wasn’t going to be my main outlet online. I had this site and was active on other social media platforms. Back then it was common for sites and apps to connect to each other, making it easy to share things elsewhere (i.e., I could link my Twitter and Facebook accounts, and whatever I tweeted was posted to my Facebook wall; the good old days). I intended to use Facebook as a repository of links to material hosted elsewhere, so I made the request to use my name and otherwise ignored the issue.

Years went by. During this time the various social media companies began closing off their networks in an effort to increase native engagement. Facebook didn’t want people to post through other social media outlets, they wanted people to log into Facebook and post directly, as their value was directly tied to their “active” user base. Using me as an example, even though I’m a registered user and my account still exists, since I can’t log in I am not an “active” user, so Facebook makes no money from me or through me. In fact, maintaining my inactive account costs them money, because they use drive space to store my posted content somewhere in the physical world. (Quick aside: I’m aware that Facebook can now make money off of people who aren’t logged in to their site directly through the use of tracking cookies, beacons, etc. found on other sites that link back to Facebook in someway and monetizing the collected data, but that’s a whole other post.)

As social media networks grew in popularity and public figures began to use them on a greater scale, another issue arose concerning the use of names: imposters. People would create accounts impersonating public figures for one reason or another. In response, social media companies began verifying accounts through various means, so that their users could know if they were interacting with the actual person the account claimed to represent (the fabled “blue check mark,” which is so often misconstrued that it’s another thing that deserves its own post). The verifications initially went to the most highly visible public figures, such as internationally known politicians, entertainers, global business leaders and so on. Eventually the process worked its way down to persons known to smaller followings: local politicians, community leaders and organizations. Eventually, they got to me.

In 2017, I got an email from Facebook requesting that I confirm that my name was Lower East Smile. I was given a deadline of seven days to do so, or I would be locked out of my account. When I tried to change my name all those years later, their AI still insisted that smile was not a first name, and that my name was most likely Lower, and would not let me proceed. The AI wanted me to go through their verification process, which would have required my sending Facebook reams of personal records and indentifying information. This was around the time the Cambridge Analytica data scandal was becoming a major news item (a brief overview, Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm that harvested data from Facebook to build specific psychographic profiles in order to create detailed propaganda campaigns targeted to individual people).

Realizing that Facebook and/or it’s affiliates, sublicensors, partners, etc. probably had some psychographic profiles that they still needed to match to actual people, I chose to opt out of Facebook rather than hand over my personal info and legal documents. I tried to download everything I shared on Facebook so that I could close my account. The second I tried to download my data, the hammer came down. My seven day deadline was dropped and I was immediately locked out. Facebook’s AI wanted me to go through the verification process to prove that I was Lower East Smile, who I am not and never was in the first place, so that I could download my data. I couldn’t even take my ball and go home.

That’s pretty much that. Like I said in the opening paragraph, I know my account still exists because of the occasional updates I get sent. I recently got an update that informed me someone shared one of my videos, so they’re out there somewhere. Eventually I’ll have the financial means to take legal action to get my intellectual property back from Facebook. I have no problem proving who I am to a court of law. If Facebook wants to do business with me, I have no problem sharing whatever information you might find on an I-9, but it would have to be one hell of a deal for me to do business with Facebook. I simply don’t trust Facebook.

Or is it Meta? I mean, the company’s real name is Meta, but Facebook is the name they go by in everyday life so…

I also used that still as my profile photo across much of social media until around 2016, when I began a greater effort towards transparency and switched to a picture of myself. I have tried to launch merch at various points through the years (check out my Champion jersey), but as depictions of smoking have gone out fashion through said years, getting a line of merch off the ground is still a work in progress. My most recent attempt was at the start of the pandemic,

but that didn’t get off the ground either. It would be probably be a lot easier to get some merchandise going if I simply changed my logo, and I’m occasionally asked why I don’t, as I generally discourage smoking. I continue to use this image as my logo for a many reasons. For one, even though Carlos feels Death Fish turned out to be a compromised version of his original vision and has reservations about it, I remain proud of the film; given our time, resources and circumstances, I think it turned out reasonably well, and was a good showcase for the actors involved. Another is that, to me, the image represents the spirit of individuality and willingness to rebel against societal repression, and does so in a non-aggressive and relatively inoffensive manner.

Until I get some physical merch going, feel free to grab an NFT of my logo, for free. Did I say it was free? That’s right, I’m distributing the initial run for free! If there’s not one available in the marketplace for free and you’d like one, send me a note and I’ll mint one for you, if they haven’t been all minted already (the initial run is 10,000, so I think it’ll be a while until that happens).

If you’re in New York State, you can find a local test site here.

CORE is also providing free testing at various locales across America.

Check with your local health department for the information most relevant to your area.

George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin.

Unless you’ve been in a sensory deprivation tank for the last several weeks, you know what happened next in the world. At that point, I wasn’t in the mood to talk shit about James Bond, Mulan, Scooby Doo, Artemis Fowl and Hamilton. I’ll get that podcast episode up eventually; I promoted it and delivering it is the professional thing to do. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t just sit around doing nothing the last few weeks. May 26 was when the PPE Go-Bag/Food Distribution project I led started, which had already been set up. I did that weekly throughout the month of June. Earlier this week, a COVID-19 test site was set up in the neighborhood, I helped out with crowd control and I intend to continue with that when I am able. Later this month, I will lead a team to reduce food waste by redistributing leftover food and produce from the Union Square Farmers’ Market to those in need as part of the Farm 2 Food Bank project.

I didn’t feel the need to immediately drop everything and go out of my way to overhaul my site to make some kind of statement in support of the idea that

BLACK LIVES MATTER

If you don’t know where I stand on that, you have been ignoring me for at least four decades. Throughout my career as a producer, I created opportunities for people of just about every disenfranchised group you can name: Latins, Blacks, Asians, Indigenous People, People from the LBGTQ+ Community; shit, just about anyone who didn’t fit into the image of what mainstream society considered acceptable was someone whose story I wanted to help them tell, and did when I was able.

In my personal life, I spend time with seniors living in residential health care to improve their quality of life, and I don’t have to stop and frisk random people of color to do that. They have doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to look after their health, but I do various activities with them, like dealing blackjack, running bingo night, transporting them to the auditorium for the occasional dance party and just hanging out and being social. I also work with students in grade school and middle school, mostly in the neighborhood, but also around the city as needed. For the last couple of years, I’ve taught creative writing and public speaking after school during the school year in the neighborhood. In the summer of 2019, I ran both science and physical education projects. I have also worked on Lego Robotics projects at schools in The Bronx and Brooklyn, though I regrettably haven’t been able to follow up on those projects.

When the pandemic began, my projects got shut down. The schools were closed, kids were at home on lockdown. Residential health care facilities limited access to medical personnel and immediate family, which hit me the hardest. Even before George Floyd was murdered, I wasn’t in a 100% good place mentally, because some of my friends may have been killed by COVID-19. Due to privacy laws, I have no idea how many because legally, they aren’t my friends, they’re my clients. I don’t even know when or if I’ll ever see any of them again. I didn’t wallow in misery, because I’m still alive, and rather than bitch and moan, I got back to helping those I could as I soon as I was able. Even before the lockdown restrictions on leaving home were eased, I was on the phone making wellness checks to seniors on behalf of The Actors’ Fund.

I’m not paid to do any of these things. I generally don’t talk about my volunteerism because I’m not doing these things to boost my social media profile or pad my resume. I do them because they need to be done. I’m not writing about it now to boast or big myself up; I’m writing about it now in the hope of encouraging others to take meaningful action in their communities. Less talk, more rock. Black Lives Matter needs to be more than another meaningless platitude, token statement or empty slogan. If all violence and hatred were to magically end tomorrow, what then?

Does Black Education Matter? Does Black Hunger and Homelessness Matter? Does Black Addiction Matter? Does Black Joy Matter? These are hypothetical questions; of course these things matter. Black Lives DO Matter, but it’s important to make the most of those lives. We need to take care of our old people and learn from their life experience. We need to educate our young people so that they have the knowledge and skills to not only make the most of any opportunity presented to them, but also to create opportunity for themselves and others. Rightous indignation can be a powerful force for social change, but we also need to remember and stress the value of compassion, respect for self and others, and the power of strength through unity.

Welcome to the future.